Interventions aimed at closing the social class achievement gap in education: changing individual, structural, and sociocultural approaches

Understanding the sources of the social class achievement gap in education is an important step toward ensuring that education serves its purpose as an engine of social mobility. The goal of the current article is to provide a brief overview of the sources of the social class achievement gap as well as interventions aimed at closing this gap. We outline three major sources of the social class achievement gap — individual skills, structural conditions, and people’s processes of meaning-making, or construals — and the interventions that target them. While all of these interventions can effect change, we propose that interventions will be most effective when tailored to fit the specific needs of students and the context in which they are delivered.